South Pole Telescope

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Claims that the 'South Pole Telescope' is a classified project are bogus

SPT

The South Pole Telescope logo.

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Table of Contents

Claims

Was the SPT constructed to track "Planet X?"

Why was the SPT constructed at the South Pole?

"The South Pole Telescope is a 10 meter diameter telescope operating at the NSF South Pole research station. The telescope is designed for conducting large-area millimeter and sub-millimeter wave surveys of faint, low contrast emission, as required to map primary and secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. The SPT is a collaboration between the U of Chicago, UC Berkley, Case Western Reserve University, U of Illinois, and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and is primarily funded through NSF OPP."¹

Claims

There are various claims made about the South Pole Telescope. Here we will deal with some of them.

Was the SPT constructed to track "Planet X?"

No. The South Pole Telescope is a millimeter and sub-millimeter microwave telescope. It cannot and does not look for small objects like planets²
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This claim appears at that bastion of knowledge known as 'YOWUSA', run by Marshall Masters, and a similar claim at 'Escape the Illusion'³ The claim essentially states that Planet X was discovered by IRAS in 1983, and that the SPT telescope was constructed to track it.

Why was the SPT constructed at the South Pole?

Because the air at the south pole is thin (altitude of 2800 m/9000 ft), dry (the air is dessicated by frigid temperatures) and stable (highest wind speed at the South Pole measured during continuous monitoring between 1957 and 1983 was only 24 m/s ^-1, and for many months the wind speed did not exceed 12 m/s^-1⁴.